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How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

manas.tech

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Re: How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

#121

Post by audunw »

hunter2_ wrote: post #108
ridgeguy wrote: post #99

Find My came to the rescue when my wife unknowingly dropped her phone during a pullover to take some pix. The turnout was on New Priest Grade, the best way to Yosemite from our home. Next morning, after the frenzied "Where's my phone" search petered out, we remembered Find My. No way, I thought. Rural road, many miles away, etc. Which new phone would you like, Dear? Find My immediately found it 43 miles away. My wife…

> infrastructure Imagine if anyone, not just Apple, could build on that, creating an automatic sneakernet. Populous areas without cell towers would come online, with ultra high latency. Throughput would also need to be throttled by the owner of each device to accommodate battery consumption preferences.

We’re not that far off from the planet being covered with low bandwidth internet anyway.

NB-IOT and LTE-M, along with the possibility that SpaceX can use Starlink satellites to provide low bandwidth LTE coverage, seems to give a viable path for global coverage soon

Only problem is that in the short term NB-IoT/LTE-M devices are rather expensive, both upfront and monthly costs. Guess that will come down over time though

Re: How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

#122

Post by megablast »

eru wrote: post #119
chrischen wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn’t expecting that. Was expecting an “even if you located them the cops won’t bother to help you recover just $XX dollars worth of stolen goods.

I think that attitude really depends on where you are, and how overworked your local police is.

And the police you get. And when in the shift they are.

Re: How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

#123

Post by megablast »

smortaz wrote: post #10

not directly relevant, but was riding my motorcycle in the boonies, and lost the phone which was on the handlebar (bumpy rocky path). Looked for it several times on the path with no luck. Then I remembered my old iPhone was in the backpack. Did a Find my phone on the backup phone and it showed exactly where it had lost touch with the primary phone. This is all without cell or Wi-Fi service. Saved me a $1000.

You had an old iphone you rarely used that still had a working sim in it? So you were paying for two phones every month?

Re: How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

#124

Post by bryanrasmussen »

semireg wrote: post #107

I had AirPods Max stolen from our car a few months ago. A week later they popped up on Find My a block away. I hopped on my bike and tracked to a small apartment building. Using Find My will show you a “warmer … warmer … colder” kind of UI and whenever I lifted my phone to a particular window (shades drawn) Find My would say “Nearby.” I called the police and they were genuinely excited to knock on the door. A guy ans…

>I had AirPods Max stolen from our car a few months ago. A week later they popped up on Find My a block away.

>The officer went back and said “listen, we know they are in your apartment, we can hear them, either go get them or we are getting a search warrant.” The guy said “ohhhh well I did have a party last week and there’s this backpack…”

>Uh huh. Headphones returned.

I mean from your description sounds like the guy was telling the truth, or is your theory that he stole your airpods, went on vacation and came back home after several weeks - which of course is also a possibility, but I think backpack left over from party sounds also reasonable.

on edit: hmm, early in the morning, so now I understand it was a week after being stolen they showed up on Find My..guess need more coffee.

Re: How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

#125

Post by teekert »

progman32 wrote: post #109
jojobas wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having anything to distract you on a motorcycle is a bad idea. Best to put your phone in DND, if you need directions have them in voice only.

Back when I rode, I made a little arrangement of LEDs around the speedometer in 3 concentric rings of ~32 lights. The blue LED closest to pointing North would light, the green LED would always point towards my home, and the red LED would point towards my destination (programmable before the trip). That's all I really needed. Basically a small version of a navigation arrow above video game characters. It meant that on…

Sounds like a business idea.

Re: How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

#126

Post by teekert »

okr wrote: post #116
oldbbsnickname wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disassemble and remove the battery. I can do this in about 1-2 minutes, others more skilled can do it in <30 seconds.

And then? You can not turn it on again, without also activating the beacon. I wonder if stolen iphones have any value except for hardware parts.

Yeah I also wonder what a thief would do with it? Maybe the recycle value is enough for her? Or she gets it to a store where they don't check and recycle parts?

Re: How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

#127

Post by amatecha »

olyjohn wrote: post #95
janus wrote: post #39

Ha, last winter I lost my phone while snowboarding in the last 300-500m before mountain base. I noticed because I was listening to music with my airpods when I got to the bottom the music had gone silent. Thankfully I had my Apple watch with me, so I immediately got off the board and start running uphill while incessantly spamming the "ping my phone" button. At some point I saw in the watch screen it briefly connecte…

Lost my FRS radio up on the mountain once. I started calling it from my friends radio... "Hello, I'm a lost radio, please find me" and someone called me back and met up with me to return the radio.

hahaha, that's great! I can imagine hiking along and hearing this scratchy voice emanating from "nowhere", tracking it down and finding this lonely radio on the ground, pleading for help to be brought back to its owner! :)

Re: How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

#128

Post by IggleSniggle »

megablast wrote: post #123
smortaz wrote: post #10

not directly relevant, but was riding my motorcycle in the boonies, and lost the phone which was on the handlebar (bumpy rocky path). Looked for it several times on the path with no luck. Then I remembered my old iPhone was in the backpack. Did a Find my phone on the backup phone and it showed exactly where it had lost touch with the primary phone. This is all without cell or Wi-Fi service. Saved me a $1000.

You had an old iphone you rarely used that still had a working sim in it? So you were paying for two phones every month?

Internet access is not necessary for Find My to work. Your devices all broadcast their public key over Bluetooth and NFC, and your devices all also have your own private key, and so are identifiable / visible in Find My.

Even if they hadn't had the local map, they can still get some useful signals from Find My (and they can still push Ring requests). However, in their case, their old phone still had the log of the last seen location. Again, no Internet required.

Re: How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

#129

Post by jen729w »

Back in the mid-90s my dad lost his car keys. Turns out they were in his dressing gown (we’re British) pocket, in the wardrobe.

So he bought one of those keyrings where you whistle and it beeps. This was a Saturday and we were visiting my grandparents, his parents. He told his dad, by now with a mild case of the Alzheimers, that he’d got this thing and that “you beep and it tells you where your keys are”.

Well my grandad, who never drove a car let alone used a computer, his mind was blown. He just had no idea how this thing could do that.

This went on for a few minutes.

Dad, increasingly frustrated: “you just beep and it tells you where your keys are!”

Grandad, increasingly confused: “... but ... how?!”

It turns out that my grandad was imagining that you whistled and that this little device shouted out, “they’re in your dressing-gown pocket!”

Re: How to find a lost phone in a no-cell-coverage camping site?

#130

Post by [deleted] »

megablast wrote: post #123
smortaz wrote: post #10

not directly relevant, but was riding my motorcycle in the boonies, and lost the phone which was on the handlebar (bumpy rocky path). Looked for it several times on the path with no luck. Then I remembered my old iPhone was in the backpack. Did a Find my phone on the backup phone and it showed exactly where it had lost touch with the primary phone. This is all without cell or Wi-Fi service. Saved me a $1000.

You had an old iphone you rarely used that still had a working sim in it? So you were paying for two phones every month?

[deleted]
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